Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/315

302 Hebrew peasant, or the ecclesiastical triune God who created the world for his own glory, and means to torment the majority of its inhabitants for ever, for his own good will and pleasure. So the relation between man and God may be thought to be ever-during wrath—Almighty hate on the one side, and the most helpless prostration on the other.

2. The feeling may be such as comes unavoidably from this idea of man, God, and their relation. It may be fear, waxing into sheer and utter despair and hopelessness of all good, both now and hereafter.

3. The action may be such as comes from these emotions: it may be killing an only son, as a sacrifice to Jenovah, making the male children pass through the fire unto Moloch, sacrificing a daughter unto Artemis, consecrating a monk to Jesus of Nazareth, or a nun to the "Virgin Mother of God." It may be a deed of Jews crucifying Jesus, or of Christians massacring the Jews by the million; it may be the act of Simeon the Stylite standing for six and forty years on a pillar-top in the market-place, or of an Indian devotee throwing himself before the car of his idol god ; it may be that of the Catholic inquisitor tearing men to pieces with his Spanish or Italian rack, or of the Protestant inquisitor burning Servetus at Geneva, or hanging a Quaker woman from the great elm on Boston common.

All these ideas, feelings, actions have prevailed, and have been called religion, and that too amongst earnest and self-denying people.

On the other hand these three things may be entirely different.

1. The idea of man may be that he is the crown of creation, with a noble nature, and a grand destination here on earth, and hereafter, we know not where, with powers proportioned to his destination, and certain to develope themselves in such manner as to secure this ultimate welfare. The idea of God may be that of infinite perfection—power almighty, wisdom all-knowing, all-righteous justice, and all-embracing love.

The idea of the relation between the two may be that God is a perfect Creator and a perfect Providence, making